Why AI Agents Can Beat the Incumbents

a16z’s Seema Amble and Elena Burger sit down with Lio co-founder and CEO Vladimir Keil to ask where AI-native startups have an advantage when incumbent software companies already own the customer, the data, and the system of record. Their answer comes down to the work that happens outside those systems. In procurement, a final price in an ERP can hide hundreds of emails, spreadsheets, supplier conversations, engineering analyses, and decisions across legal, finance, and operations. Vlad explains how Lio uses multi-agent systems to take on more of that end-to-end work, from sourcing and RFQs to negotiation, shipment tracking, and invoices. They also discuss how enterprises learn to trust agents with increasingly consequential decisions, why the last 20% of an internal AI build can require most of the effort, and what happens when both buyers and suppliers have agents working on their behalf.